This seven-week practicum is designed to give students from a variety of disciplines a background in education in emergency contexts, from preparedness to response and recovery. Class sessions will explore the multiple roles of education, including critical linkages to sectors like health and protection, in each of these phases; introduce students to the major education actors within the international humanitarian architecture; and prepare students to utilize best practices and minimum standards for education programming and policy-making.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
Advanced topics in radiogenic isotope and trace-element geochemistry. Origin and composition of the Earth, evolution of the continents and mantle, and applications to igneous and surficial processes.
The Business and Human Rights Clinic provides a space for students to deepen their knowledge and experience of business and human rights. Through student education, skills training, and collaborative, rigorous and self-reflective project work, students will learn to be strategic and creative advocates in partnership with NGOs and communities, while advancing business and human rights methodologies and scholarship. The Clinic is also a laboratory for testing and modeling new and innovative modes of business and human rights work, with a focus on enhancing human rights methods through interdisciplinary partnerships. Our subject for 2015-2016, investment chain mapping, is a cutting edge, highly technical skill taught nowhere else and with strong career potential. Through direct contact with the Client, Inclusive Development International, and its international and local partners, and through possible site visits, the Clinic will provide a unique opportunity for students to acquire the skills to put into practice an innovative and timely advocacy approach to holding transnational corporations and development finance institutions accountable for human rights harms. This expertise will position them strongly to become leaders in the field. In future years, the Clinic will continue to engage in projects at the cutting edge of the evolving business and human rights field, as it aims to establish successful long-term relationships with clients. Instructor permission required for registration. Please join the waitlist is SSOL and follow instructions on the waitlist to be considered.
In the first semester a series of workshops will introduce the field of international history and various research skills and methods such as conceptualization of research projects and use of oral sources. The fall sessions will also show the digital resources available at Columbia and how students can deploy them in their individual projects. In the second semester students will apply the skills acquired in the fall as they develop their proposal for the Master's thesis, which is to be completed next year at the LSE. The proposal identifies a significant historical question, the relevant primary and secondary sources, an appropriate methodology, what preliminary research has been done and what remains to be done. Students will present their work-in-progress.
The projection and realization of urban development in the Netherlands from 1900 to 1945. Comparative critical analysis of the extant scholarly studies dealing with the period in question. The interrelation between ideological, socio-economic, and technological factors on the one hand, and architecture and urban development on the other.
This course will study the materials, techniques, settings, and meanings of skilled craft and artistic practices in the early modern period (1350-1750), in order to reflect upon a series of issues, including craft knowledge and artisanal epistemology; the intersections between craft and science; and questions of historical methodology and evidence in the reconstruction of historical experience. The course will be run as a “Laboratory Seminar,” with discussions of primary and secondary materials, as well as text-based research and hands-on work in a laboratory. This course is one component of the Making and Knowing Project of the Center for Science and Society. This course contributes to the collective production of a transcription, English translation, and critical edition of a late sixteenth-century manuscript in French, Ms. Fr. 640. In 2014-15, the course concentrated on mold-making and metalworking; in 2015-16, on colormaking. In 2016-17, it will focus on natural history, researching the context of the manuscript, and reprising some color-making and moldmaking techniques. Students are encouraged to take this course both semesters (or more), but will receive full credit only once. Different laboratory work and readings will be carried out each semester.
This course is designed to introduce all first-year graduate students in History to major books and problems of the discipline. It aims to familiarize them with historical writings on periods and places outside their own prospective specialties. This course is open to Ph.D. students in the department of History ONLY.
U.S. agricultural practice has been presented as a paradigm for the rest of the world to emulate, yet is a result of over a century of unique development. Contemporary agriculture has its historical roots in the widely varied farming practices, social and political organizations, and attitudes toward the land of generations of farmers and visionaries. We will explore major forces shaping the practice of U.S. agriculture, particularly geographical and social perspectives and the development and adoption of agricultural science and technology. We will consider how technological changes and political developments (government policies, rationing, subsidies) shape visions of and transmission of agriculture and the agrarian ideal.
It has become vital (because of mass poverty, climate change, biodiversity rapid erosion, water and food crisis,...), to shift to a more sustainable form of development. This will require effectively mobilizing all resources of human societies: scientific and technical resources, as well as behavioral and institutional moving forces. None may be neglected, and the way they are articulated will be decisive.
This course will be a central part of the Columbia History Department's History in Action Program, a pilot program of the American Historical Association / Mellon Foundation initative Career Diversity for Historians. One of the central aims of the program is to provide graduate students in History with training that will allow for engagement outside the academy; the yearly clinic course is an opportunity to put this sort of training into practice. (In Spring 2015, the clinic course was built around workshops and projects supervised by practitioners in various fields such as journalism, filmmaking, and museum work; the 2016-17 iteration will be run in conjunction with Teacher's College and focus on pre-college history education.) The current course will focus on engagement with NGOs. Memory of historical violence and victimization plays an increasing role in international and intra-national conflicts. Numerous countries have focused on historical crimes and atrocities that occurred in prior regimes or during historical conflicts, but other states, including both new and established democracies, ignore past atrocities. In general, a demand to redress atrocities has become routine, and is framed as appeal to an international norm. In some cases, the memory of historical violence provides a foundation for reconciliation, but in many more it remains a continuous site of conflict and contention. Why this difference? How does a focus on the past incite conflict or contribute to reconciliation? These issues are particularly vexing in cases of historical atrocities: What are the standards for historical responsibility? How do efforts at reconciliation around historical conflicts differ from calls for immediate accountability for the past in newly democratic societies? The course examines these political and ethical dilemmas in comparative historical perspective.
This course investigates in-depth the significance of resistance among African-descended communities in the Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanophone and Lusophone Atlantic World from approximately 1700-1950. We will examine the genesis of resistance as it affected key historical transformations such as slavery and abolition, labor and migration, and transatlantic political organizing. The class will explore various forms of resistance to racial epistemologies, racialized labor regimes, and gendered discourses that formed a continuum of cultural and political opposition to oppression among Black Atlantic communities. The course will also reflect on how resistance plays a central role in the formation of individual and collective identities among black historical actors. Resistance will be explored as a critical category of historical analysis, and a central aspect in the making of the “Black Atlantic.” Field(s): LAC
This year-long workshop will meet every two weeks for two hours to discuss the structure of a dissertation prospectus, strategies of grant-writing, and, most importantly, successive drafts of individual dissertation prospectuses. Consistent attendance and participation are mandatory.
This course gives students the opportunity to design their own curriculum: To attend lectures, conferences and workshops on historical topics related to their individual interests throughout Columbia University. Students may attend events of their choice, and are especially encouraged to attend those sponsored by the History Department (www.history.columbia.edu). (The Center for International History - cih.columbia.edu - and the Heyman Center for the Humanities - heymancenter.org/events/ - also have impressive calendars of events, often featuring historians.) The goal of this mini-course is to encourage students to take advantage of the many intellectual opportunities throughout the University, to gain exposure to a variety of approaches to history, and at the same time assist them in focusing on a particular area for their thesis topic.
All graduate students are required to attend the department colloquium as long as they are in residence. No degree credit is granted.
Capstone workshops apply the practical skills and analytical knowledge learned at SIPA to a real-world issue. Students are organized into small consulting teams (typically 6 students per team) and assigned a substantive, policy-oriented project with an external client. Student teams, working under the supervision of a faculty expert, answer a carefully defined problem posed by the client. Each team produces an actionable report and an oral briefing of their findings at the close of the workshop that is designed to translate into real change on the ground. The Capstone is a graduation requirement for all Masters of Public Administration and Masters of International Affairs students; it is typically taken in the final semester at SIPA. Registration in this course requires an application, please visit: sipa.columbia.edu/academics/workshops/workshop-students for more information
Capstone workshops apply the practical skills and analytical knowledge learned at SIPA to a real-world issue. Students are organized into small consulting teams (typically 6 students per team) and assigned a substantive, policy-oriented project with an external client. Student teams, working under the supervision of a faculty expert, answer a carefully defined problem posed by the client. Each team produces an actionable report and an oral briefing of their findings at the close of the workshop that is designed to translate into real change on the ground. The Capstone is a graduation requirement for all Masters of Public Administration and Masters of International Affairs students; it is typically taken in the final semester at SIPA. Registration in this course requires an application, please visit: sipa.columbia.edu/academics/workshops/workshop-students for more information
Capstone workshops apply the practical skills and analytical knowledge learned at SIPA to a real-world issue. Students are organized into small consulting teams (typically 6 students per team) and assigned a substantive, policy-oriented project with an external client. Student teams, working under the supervision of a faculty expert, answer a carefully defined problem posed by the client. Each team produces an actionable report and an oral briefing of their findings at the close of the workshop that is designed to translate into real change on the ground. The Capstone is a graduation requirement for all Masters of Public Administration and Masters of International Affairs students; it is typically taken in the final semester at SIPA. Registration in this course requires an application, please visit: sipa.columbia.edu/academics/workshops/workshop-students for more information
Prerequisite: completion of all M.Phil. requirements, and approval of a research proposal by the supervising faculty adviser.